A Piece of the Pie

Chapter 2: The ANC Youth League's clarion call for nationalisation

Chapter 2

The ANC Youth League's clarion call for nationalisation

The roots of the ANC Youth League's call for the nationalisation of the mines lie in the ANC's tumultuous Polokwane conference in 2007, during which Thabo Mbeki, the president of both the country and the ANC, was defeated as head of the organisation by his former deputy, Jacob Zuma. The party later ousted Mbeki from the presidency. This change of leadership was intended as, and in many ways was, a wholesale spring-cleaning of the organisation, its policies and practices, including its economic policy.

Yet, change to what? Was this a revitalisation, or a process of adaptation, or a tactical change in the light of current economic circumstances, or indeed a shift to the left? Political commentators differed, sometimes sharply, on how this change should be defined and characterised. The actual resolutions that emanated from the Polokwane conference were themselves at times contradictory and confusing, oddly providing ammunition for all sides of this debate. Yet the context was clear: Mbeki, and his modernist, 'third way' style of economic management, was out, and a whole new set of actors, including many from the trade union movement and the South African Communist Party (SACP), were at last being given a place at the top table.

Yet, the swing to the left was a muted one, and involved as many issues that simply refined the focus of the organisation as there were leftward changes to hard policy. The new economic policy approach to the mining sector was a good example, in fact. In a general resolution on 'economic transformation', the party expressed faith in a 'mixed economy, where the state, private capital, cooperative and other forms of social ownership complement each other in an integrated way to eliminate poverty and foster shared economic growth'. However, the same resolution went on to say: 'Our understanding of a developmental state is that it is located at the centre of a mixed economy. It is a state which leads and guides that economy and which intervenes in the interest of the people as a whole.'1

Clearly, the implication of convivial economic sectors 'complementing each other', as good-natured friends might, was being significantly adapted. Clearly some sectors, one might say, were more equal than others, and an enhanced role for the state was being carved out. This was given further impetus in the 'resolves' section of the resolution, which said:

The developmental state should maintain its strategic role in shaping the key sectors of the economy, including the mineral and energy complex and the national transport and logistics system. Whilst the forms of state interventions would differ, the over-riding objective would be to intervene strategically in these sectors to drive the growth, development and transformation of the structure of our economy.2

The significance of this change in direction was to have its own economic ramifications, but as far as the call for nationalisation is concerned, the document, really for the first time in the ANC's recent history, appeared to permit the notion of direct state 'intervention' - nationalisation, in other words - as one possible form. The resolution was 'fudged', as the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) would say. It certainly was not clear. But it did unquestionably emphasise the role of the state, singled out the mines as a special case, and opened the door for what was at that stage politely called 'intervention'.

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The next official step took place at the ANCYL's 23rd national congress, which took place in Soweto in June 2008. The congress resolutions included a long discourse on 'economic transformation', like the Polokwane congress the year before. However, despite the similar title, the content was notably different. The tone was angry, acrimonious and finger-pointing, and not only at shibboleths outside the Tripartite Alliance grouping (the ANC, Cosatu and SACP), like 'monopoly capital'. It included some bitter passages about the ANC's own policies, mainly the Growth Employment and Redistribution (Gear) plan introduced a decade earlier by then Finance Minister Trevor Manuel. For the left of the party, Gear had become a kind of summation of what was wrong with economic policy.

The resolution did, however, also reflect some of the comparative economic pain being suffered by young South Africans, a topic we will return to later. It said that '. youth continue to be the most marginal beneficiaries of our democratic system, being the most affected by high levels of unemployment, under-employment, casualisation, social and economic exclusion and poverty'.3 All of this was accurate.

Overall, however, the resolution was fiercely angry and activist in a way that the Polokwane version had not been. For example, it raised several times the issue of Chinese people being classified as potential beneficiaries of black economic empowerment (the ANC's black upliftment scheme), specifically calling for their exclusion.

The resolution continued: 'Gear should assume the responsibility of the South African economy not being developmental in orientation, thereby requiring some attention in shaping a new-look economic posture leaning more heavily towards development than on narrow economic growth'. As a matter of fact, the Gear policy was quite clearly developmental in orientation, as the name intimated. Yet Gear, introduced partly as an attempt to stabilise public finances, also made concessions to the notion of fiscal responsibility. That part of the programme was blamed by the left for what they saw as an over-zealous anti-inflationary stance, a restriction on government debt and declining levels of government spending.

And then there was nationalisation. In a section of the resolution entitled 'On Monopoly Capital', the following assertion was made: 'we must continue to change patterns of ownership of the means of production in South Africa, and this should be informed by our vision as outlined in the Freedom Charter that people shall share in the country's wealth'.

It continued: 'The means to regulate monopoly capital and monopolistic behaviour by huge corporations should include nationalisation, strengthening of competition law enforcement, and expropriation without compensation. The expropriation without compensation should particularly apply to monopolies and cartels that fix prices at the expense of poor people . we must continue to view and approach Monopoly Capital as the strategic enemy of the National Democratic Revolution.'

The critical thing to note is that, at this point, nationalisation was not seen really as a economic policy option in its own right but as a punishment for 'monopolistic behaviour', and then only as one possible punishment. The context here was that investigations conducted by the Competition Commission and Tribunal had discovered that several companies, including bread makers were colluding to set prices. The bread price inquiry first exposed price-fixing in 2007, but the event made headlines throughout that year and the next and particularly captured public ire. It was probably because of this context that the use of an inflammatory word like 'nationalisation' was barely reported at the time, and certainly didn't begin to form part of general political discourse.

In any event, the Youth League and the whole political movement had much bigger fish to fry. The main issue at hand was the struggle to get corruption charges against Zuma dropped, so as to allow him to stand for the April 2009 general election free of any legal albatrosses around his neck. The second, more critical and immediate battle was to ensure Zuma defeated then President Thabo Mbeki as head of the party. In this hectic political turmoil, the ANCYL's passing mention of nationalisation was quickly forgotten - but not for long.

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In many ways, the subject of nationalisation is wrapped up with the personality and political fortunes of Julius Malema, and his personal roller-coaster ride through South African politics. The audacity of the ANCYL's call for nationalisation under his leadership matches the audacity of his own leadership style and his own personality. It's a real irony for the ANC that the organisation was rattled by the call for nationalisation, and yet Malema's confrontational, somewhat autocratic style was precisely what the organisation required at the time to ram through Zuma's rise to political prominence.

The very ANCYL conference where the word 'nationalisation' first appeared is a good example of that 'ends justify the means' mentality that was washing through the ANC political structures at the time. The conference itself was a delayed version of an earlier meeting at Mangaung in April 2008, at which Malema was elected League president.

The reason for the delay was that the results of this close election were disputed, and, it turned out later, possibly with justification. In her book, An Inconvenient Youth, Fiona Forde quotes an unnamed supporter as saying that Malema came to the earlier conference in April without the clear support of many League branches or the support of most provinces.4 He was at the time one of the nine provincial secretaries of the organisation, and did not hold a directly elected executive position.

At the time, the Youth League, like the party itself, was split into Zuma-supporting...